For the next two days, Li Weiyi didn’t get out of bed, looking as weak and sickly as ever. In truth, he was completely absorbed in exploring the path to transcendence. Within his body, the silver trace veins had increased to thirteen, meaning that thirteen channels for circulating qi had been established.
After several attempts, he couldn’t find any way to add more silver trace veins. Fortunately, these thirteen veins already spread throughout his body and served as channels for scalding warm qi to nourish his blood, flesh, and sinew. In just two short days, Li Weiyi had completely transformed.
His hearing and vision were sharp, his five senses keen, and his bodily functions had grown to an unimaginable level. It was as if his body contained an inexhaustible source of strength—he felt he could probably defeat a bull with one punch. The injury on his left arm healed at an unbelievable speed.
The wound had already begun to close and form a scab, allowing him to lift and grasp objects with only mild pain if he wasn’t too forceful. Such rapid self-healing was completely beyond normal and hard to comprehend.
Li Weiyi estimated that with the nourishment of this scorching qi flow, his body would be fully restored within two or three more days.
Were it not for the need to hide his true abilities and avoid suspicion that he might have actually ingested the Buddha’s relic, Li Weiyi would have rushed out immediately to test his newfound strength and speed. He felt it could very well scare him itself. However, these two days he was extremely hungry.
His appetite surged, and no matter how much he ate, he just couldn’t seem to fill up. In stark contrast to Professor Xu, who lay in the adjacent sickbed with little appetite, almost all the meals delivered by the students ended up in Li Weiyi’s hungry mouth.
“I can’t open another silver trace vein, so I’ll have to pause my exploration of the transcendental. I need to go outside and see what’s really going on with this bronze ship... and maybe find some food along the way.”
During these days, everyone was talking about how “the bronze ship is gigantic and sometimes gets lost in the fog,” “the Graveyard Forest is eerie with strange sounds coming from within,” and “the Golden Crow Corpse is as enormous as a mountain, its light bright enough to illuminate the darkness, its heat warding off the bitter cold,” among other things.
Yet in his heart, Li Weiyi did not really have a clear picture. Now that his wounds were healing and he had the power of transcendence backing him up, Li Weiyi felt much more confident compared with the confused and anxious state he was in just two days ago.
A person’s confidence often comes from having sufficient resources, or possessing superior strength, or having solid backing—not just from a few encouraging words spoken from nowhere. Suddenly, he found himself self-assured. Not wanting to draw unwanted attention by being too special, Li Weiyi acted like an ordinary injured person.
He pretended struggle as he sat up slowly, his feet gingerly searching for the ground.
“Brother Li, why are you getting out of bed? Need some help?” asked Gao Huan, who wasn’t injured too badly himself.
His neck twist had already healed, though his broken right arm was still strapped with wooden boards and wrapped in bandages. He had just gotten up as well, intending to relieve himself. Li Weiyi and Gao Huan walked out of the medical tent together.
When they saw the scene on the bronze deck outside, even though he had prepared himself mentally, Li Weiyi was still shocked. A chill ran down his spine, reaching all the way to his head. It was as if they had stepped into the Underworld itself, the area filled with tombstones, small burial mounds, ghost flags, and prayer banners.
A dense, grim fog hung in the air, severely limiting visibility. Above, there was heavy, dark clouds, low enough to feel as though they were pressing down on the deck, creating an overwhelmingly oppressive and stifling atmosphere.
Previously, they had said that within the visible range one could only see three or four rows of burial mounds, and once inside the Graveyard Forest it would be like stepping into a maze. However, Li Weiyi’s eyes, having been nurtured by the scorching qi, allowed him to see further.
He could clearly make out seven or eight rows of graves within a hundred meters, where the fog did not obscure sight. Still, the deck itself was as wide as 500 meters, and the mysterious profundity of “within these mountains, the clouds run so deep you cannot tell what lies beyond” still prevailed, filling one with awe and reverence.
The only source of light was that vast mass of red glow emanating from the Golden Crow Corpse that the many scientific team members had spoken about. They said that getting a close-up look was utterly shocking—it seemed that despite endless ages of death, the corpse’s feathers retained an odd and intense heat, its light dazzling.
But through the distance and thick net of grim fog, Li Weiyi could only see a large area of dark red glow, like a dark red mountain whose form and details of the corpse were impossible to discern.
“At first, when we were on the bronze ship, there wasn’t nearly this much fog. It only thickened after we set sail,” someone remarked.
“I heard many strange stories – that some people in the Graveyard Forest encountered a ghostly camel caravan with jingling bells, and in the end, the caravan walked into a tomb marked with a ghost flag and just vanished.”
“Others said that once while walking in the Graveyard Forest, they heard the sound of chains dragging and claws scratching metal deep underground. It’s feared that inside this ship, there might be some unknown terror sealed away, though no one has ever found an entrance at all.”
“I’m convinced we’ve fallen into what they call the Underworld. Remember that giant beast, Nine Infants, that had capsized the scientific research ship? It was captured by a single golden claw—I’m telling you, it was the claw of a Kunpeng. How big is a Kunpeng? Legend says it may span thousands of miles, as seen by Zhuangzi in his dream tour of the Underworld.”
“They say the Underworld is both terrifying and vast. During the Xia and Shang dynasties, it invaded Earth, and at the time even the deities of Earth believed it to be monstrous demons from the North Sea. Who would have thought that the Underworld could be hidden in something as tiny as the microscopic?”
After relieving themselves, Gao Huan began recounting a mix of assorted myths and his own wild speculations. When asked how he knew so much, he mentioned some obscure book titles that Li Weiyi had never heard of. After fetching some food from the kitchen tent and filling their stomachs, the two of them passed a small new grave.
Gao Huan sounded rather wistful.
“When we set out, the longship ‘Dragon Pole’ had 117 people onboard. Only 82 survived, and over a dozen were severely injured from falls.”
On the deck, there were three medical tents in total, and the one where Li Weiyi and Gao Huan were staying was right near the ship’s edge—just one of the three.
“Survival doesn’t necessarily mean fortune,” Li Weiyi thought gloomy thoughts about the future.
Soon enough, conflicts might break out on board due to shortages of food and water, and eventually, everyone might face mutual destruction. His heart grew heavy at the thought. In this microscopic world, the situation would be different from Earth—if there’s no shore to land on, they wouldn’t last long on the supplies they currently had.
Li Weiyi had also heard that the team members tried to bind iron buckets to ropes to fetch water from the dim, unseen sea, lowering them over a hundred meters before finally reaching the surface. However, they encountered an immense force that nearly dragged the fetching team members down. Every attempt turned out in the same dismal result.
They could hear the ocean waves, but could not bring the water up. There was some unknown danger in the sea.
“You’re absolutely right about that!”
Gao Huan looked around nervously, then whispered, “I heard that to solve the food and water issues, the higher-ups decided to conduct tests and experiments on the blood from the Golden Crow and Black Flood Dragon corpses. It was personally handled by Dr. Cai, who already gave the test results yesterday. Whether it can be directly drunk, who knows?”
“I even heard that Xie Tianshu proposed using those severely injured as experimental subjects. If it works, they might recover fully; if not, we could at least save a lot of food and water.”
“But that proposal was collectively opposed by the higher-ups. In my opinion, it will be implemented sooner or later; when the food and water run dangerously low and the living conditions become unbearable, they’ll feign concern and ask the injured for their consent. In reality, those injured people don’t have any other choice.”
“Once the injured are used up, it will be us old and weak who suffer next. No matter where we are, it’s people eating people. The classes will be clearly divided.”
Li Weiyi replied, “Perhaps there is another way.” Gao Huan’s interest was piqued.
“What method?”
Li Weiyi pointed ahead toward a cluster of tall burial mounds. There, Cai Yutong was leading more than a dozen scientific team members, digging up the grayish-white soil from the mounds and spreading it on the deck near the ship’s side in an area about three and a half mu in size.
Nearby, several bags of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and seeds for various vegetables had been lined up. Buckets full of Black Flood Dragon and Golden Crow corpse blood were also prepared off to one side. Gao Huan laughed heartily, “As expected of Dr. Cai.
Yes, they’re trying experiments with plants first. And besides, there’s plenty of water on the research ship. We could grow vegetables and fruits to become self-sufficient.”
At the sound of the laughter, Cai Yutong looked in their direction and coldly walked over.
“Who told you to leave the medical tent? The wind on deck is so cold. With your weak condition, you can’t handle it. The moment you start feeling a bit better, you start messing around?”
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Li Weiyi muttered quietly.
Gao Huan, caught off guard by Cai Yutong’s fierce gaze, stuttered an explanation, “It’s not that I’m that weak—I wasn’t messing around. I just got up to relieve myself…”
“None of your business.”
Within a few paces, Cai Yutong began a tirade of admonishments and warnings, as if her very glance could drive Li Weiyi back to the medical tent. This senior had a rather strong personality. Yet, because she was the one responsible for transfusions and care, Li Weiyi never really lost his temper in front of her.
After she had scolded him enough, Li Weiyi, in as gentle a tone as he could muster, said, “Senior, you seem to be a bit unstable lately. If you’re feeling pressured or need help, please tell me. Maybe I can be of assistance.”
Li Weiyi felt that the reason for Cai Yutong’s harsh edge was probably the enormous pressure from the leadership. Perhaps someone had already forced her to conduct experiments on living people. Gao Huan, clearly misunderstanding, added quickly, “Drink more hot water and keep warm.”
Before Cai Yutong could recover from their banter, the two had quietly slipped away.
“Terrifying, isn’t it! Brother Li, let me give you some advice: no matter how beautiful she is or how perfect her figure, you should never get involved with a female PhD,” Gao Huan said, still trembling slightly.
Li Weiyi laughed, “You’ve got it all wrong. We’re just alumni; we’ve known each other for only a few days at most.”
“Alumni? A close friend who cares like that can’t possibly be just a casual acquaintance. She tells you more than she does everyone else, and even serves you fish soup. Look around, on this ship among all our classmates, who else has sent me fish soup? Not to mention, she even feeds you!”
Gao Huan argued.
“She may seem cold on the outside but warm inside, that’s just her nature,” Li Weiyi replied, glancing toward the dark red patch in the fog that resembled a mountain or a range of hills.
Curiosity welled up inside him.
“I want to go and see the Black Flood Dragon Corpse and the Golden Crow Corpse up close.”
In his mind, he recalled the marvelous scenes on the bronze ship after falling into the Arctic Ocean, as his body shrank smaller and smaller. At its clearest, the bronze ship, no bigger than a fishing boat, had appeared right before his eyes. He distinctly remembered seeing two kinds of energies cover the ship: immortal radiance and the grim fog.
The immortal radiance emanated from the stern, where there was a unique and splendid ancient-style building, resembling a palace fit for divine beings. What on earth could be hidden there?
“Come on, let’s go together. I haven’t seen those two legendary divine beasts with my own eyes either. You tell me, how did they die? And why, even in death, do they seem to still glow and give off heat?”
“That’s utterly beyond belief. This ship must have come from some resplendent, magnificent, primeval world—and perhaps it’s even taking us there.”
Gao Huan, practically buzzing with excitement, walked alongside Li Weiyi toward the dark red glow near the stern, adding, “Actually, given your special relationship with Dr. Cai, you should quietly find out the real truth. If the blood of the Golden Crow and the Black Flood Dragon can indeed be consumed, why don’t we have a few cups ourselves?
It wouldn’t be any different from taking an immortal pill or spirit medicine. Who knows, maybe your arm will be fully restored by tomorrow.” Li Weiyi replied, “There’s really nothing special between me and Senior.
And besides, if the blood could be drank directly, why would she go to the trouble of gathering people to clear land and start farming?” Gao Huan had his own theory.
“Women, you mustn’t listen to what she says or what she does. You need to make her fall deeply in love with you, so that she loses all sense and tells you the truth. Who’s to say Dr. Cai hasn’t secretly taken a few sips herself, only to then tell everyone that Golden Crow blood and Black Flood Dragon blood aren’t drinkable?”
“Li Weiyi, my dear, I’m a few years older than you. I know women all too well. In everyday life, they may laugh and share a deep bond with you as classmates, but when you’re injured and lying in bed, not even your fish soup is safe from them.”
Li Weiyi felt that Gao Huan was too hung up on the fish soup.
“Actually… you’re not hurt that badly. You could go to the kitchen tent yourself. Everyone’s so busy that they might not have paid attention to you.”
Gao Huan mulled it over and grudgingly accepted Li Weiyi’s explanation. … Breaking past 100,000 collections, an extra chapter added. There’s extra material in storage, simply on a whim!
(The end of this chapter)